Byron's Life

The Poetry of Lord Byron

In this course, Professor Sir Drummond Bone (University of Oxford) discusses the life and poetry of Lord Byron. After a brief introduction to the man himself—once famously described as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”—we then provide a brief overview of his literary output, including such landmark writings as Childe Harold, Manfred, The Turkish Tales, and Don Juan. After that, we look more closely at five of Byron’s poems: Stanzas to Music (1814), Fare Thee Well (1815), So We’ll Go No More A Roving (1817), On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year (1824) and Don Juan (1818-24).

Byron's Life

In this module, we focus on the life and times of Lord Byron himself, thinking in particular about Byron’s celebrity status—which he owed both to his extraordinary poetry and to various scandals—as well as his travels round Germany, Switzerland, Italy and (especially) Greece, where he died at the age of just thirty-six.